


mercy

by themorninglark



Category: Free!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Introspection, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 14:19:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3853879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/themorninglark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I’m sorry, Haru.”</i>
  <br/>
  <i>“For what?” Haruka asks.</i>
  <br/>
  <i>“Being a dick?” Rin offers.</i>
</p><p>In which Haruka and Rin navigate the currents of their tumultuous lives together, find a space they can share with minimal bickering, and learn that mercy is a gift readily given between friends without ever having to ask for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title and inspiration: Dar Williams' beautiful song "Mercy of the Fallen".
> 
> [Listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoM6rzpgdwk) | [Lyrics](http://www.metrolyrics.com/mercy-of-the-fallen-lyrics-dar-williams.html)

_**(two nights)** _

“Hey, Haru, I - ”

Makoto’s words are cut off by Haruka, who raises a hand to his mouth, finger to his lips in a swift, sudden movement. He catches Makoto’s eye, and nods to the opposite side of their shared table.

Matsuoka’s head is resting on top of his open textbook, hair falling over his forehead. His face is hidden. His shoulders rise and fall, quiet and steady.

Makoto laughs softly. “He fell asleep, huh.”

“He’s better like this,” remarks Haruka, under his breath. “When he’s not talking.”

Makoto looks up at the clock on Haruka’s bedroom wall. His eyes widen. “Ah, it’s so late!”

“Yeah,” says Haruka, following Makoto’s gaze. He yawns, and rubs his eyes.

“I guess we got really engrossed in math…”

Makoto trails off at the sound of a light knock, and he turns around. Haruka looks up as the door swings open gently. His mother peeks round into his room, smiling at Makoto.

“Makoto-kun? Your father just called - ”

“Yes!” Makoto yelps, stuffing all his books into his backpack in a hurry. “I’m so sorry, we just lost track of time…”

Haruka shoots Makoto a pointed look through narrowed eyes, then jerks his head at Matsuoka. _Don’t be dumb. There’s no need to say sorry. This guy’s imposing even more than you, isn’t he?_

Makoto gives Haruka a sheepish grin as he shoulders his bag and gets to his feet. _Should we wake him up?_

“Ah - ”

Haruka’s gaze flicks upwards at his mother. She’s just caught sight of Matsuoka, still slumped over his books at Haruka’s table.

“Matsuoka-kun must be really exhausted…” she murmurs, lowering her voice.

“He worked hard at the pool today!” says Makoto.

 _As if you and I didn’t,_ thinks Haruka peevishly, but he keeps his silence.

“I’ll call his grandmother,” Haruka’s mother says. “Haruka, let him stay the night.”

Haruka’s head snaps up. “What?”

“It’s late. We can’t let Matsuoka-kun go home by himself at this time, can we?”

Haruka looks away, a muffled protest on his lips. He wants to say that Matsuoka can look after himself. He wants to say that it’s Matsuoka’s own fault for working so hard that he’s drained himself out.

He looks at the opposite wall, and holds his tongue. He stands up to walk Makoto out.

Makoto doesn’t say anything. But Haruka doesn’t miss the tiny smile of amusement and the gentle crinkling round his eyes as they head out the house, and wave goodnight at the front door. Haruka stands in the front yard for a few moments, stalling for time, listening to Makoto’s footsteps and watching his back grow smaller down the stone stairway.

“Haruka, dear?” he hears his mother call from inside. “Come in. You’ll catch a cold.”

With a barely audible sigh, Haruka turns around and goes back to his room.

His mother’s already rolled out the spare futon and piled up some spare blankets at the foot of the mattress. Matsuoka’s stirred in his sleep. He’s resting his cheek on the crook of his elbow now, face turned upwards. In the silence of the night, Haruka can hear the sound of his breathing, short inhales, slow exhales; he hears a low, incoherent mumble escape his lips from time to time.

 _Great,_ thinks Haruka. _He talks in his sleep too._

Haruka steps soundlessly round the table to the edge of his bed, stops, and sits down, eyeing Matsuoka with a small, irresolute frown for a few moments. He wonders if he should wake him up. Or roll him bodily onto the futon. That doesn’t look like a comfortable position to be sleeping in. Matsuoka will have a crick in his neck in the morning.

And Haruka thinks, Matsuoka looks so much _smaller_ like this.

It’s not just that his body is curled up on itself, that his back is hunched and his shoulders drawn in, arms hugging opposite elbows. It’s the quiet. The way someone seems to have hit a pause button on this boy. The fact that he’s not talking a mile a minute or getting in Haruka’s face, the fact that those firecracker eyes are veiled and hidden.

Matsuoka in the daytime is larger than life. He is exhausting. Haruka can barely keep up with him. But Matsuoka like this, in the night, is just -

 _Fragile,_ thinks Haruka. Fragile and pale.

Just a child. Younger than him and Makoto.

_Why am I thinking these weird thoughts?_

Haruka stands up, feeling irritated, and goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

 

 

 _From: Tachibana Makoto_  
_By the way, Rin, here’s Haru’s number ^^_  
_**Attachment:** Contact: Haru_

Rin stares down at his phone. _Fuck this shit,_ he thinks.

It’s bad enough that Gou is meddling and has somehow got herself involved with those guys, bad enough that Makoto has his number and is calling him, leaving him voicemails in the middle of the night, and now…

_What do you want me to do with this, Makoto?_

Rin’s finger hovers over the _Delete_ button.

He doesn’t need Haru’s number. He doesn’t want to talk to him. All he needs to do is swim. _Swim. And win._ That’s enough. That’s all there is between the two of them. It’s not like Haru even wants to talk to him either. Haru never really wants to talk to anyone, maybe not even Makoto, not when he can say so much more without words.

All they need is a pool, and someone to blow the whistle.

All they need is to dive in.

_And never speak a word._

In the darkness of his room, the light from the phone seems exceptionally glaring. Rin is all alone tonight. Nitori is at some project discussion with his classmates, according to the duck-shaped post-it he left on Rin’s pillow; as if Rin really cared or _needed_ to know.

Rin lies back on his pillow, grinding his teeth in irritation, and reads Makoto’s message again. His eyelid twitches at the happy emoticon. Makoto hasn’t changed. Nagisa hasn’t changed. None of them - none of them have been through what he has, none of them failed, none of them have been a disappointment to everyone -

His thought stops short abruptly, and pulls up with a shuddering, screeching halt.

_What about Haru?_

_Has Haru changed?_

Rin feels a bitter, twisting unease in his chest.

He remembers his first race against Haru years ago. He remembers the feeling that had surged through him then. He can’t ever forget it, much as he wishes he could.

_That feeling is gone._

Something is _missing_ , damn it all, from Haru’s swimming, and it makes Rin so angry, it makes him see red, because what the _fuck_ has Haru been doing with himself all these years, what has he been doing with that goddamn unfair god-given talent while Rin’s been busy throwing himself at every wall in Sydney, and _shattering_ into a million jagged pieces?

Rin grips his phone tighter, and realises with a start that his palms are sweating. His finger’s still hovering over that button. It’s starting to cramp up.

He presses it without opening the contact card attached.

_This message will be permanently deleted._

_Delete?_

_Del -_

And Rin’s fingers shake, just the tiniest bit, and his phone slips out of his grasp and lands on his forehead with a dull _clunk_.

 

****

_**(two apologies)** _

Haruka has always been a light sleeper, and he’s just started drifting off when the sound of his phone ringing wakes him up. His eyes fly open. He’s wide awake. He _hates_ that sound.

The clock on his nightstand says 11.30pm.

It can’t be his parents. They sleep early. _Makoto?_

Haruka gets to his feet and goes over to his desk. The bright light from his phone display is filling the room with an unearthly glow. He picks it up.

It’s not Makoto.

He flips it open, and puts it to his ear. He opens his mouth to say _hello_. Nothing comes out.

“Haru?”

“…Rin?”

Haruka almost doesn’t recognise the voice floating down the phone. People always sound so funny on the phone. Different. Haruka has never been the biggest fan of phone calls.

“We haven’t talked on the phone for a while.”

 _Have we ever talked on the phone?_ Haruka wonders.

He supposes that there were times, perhaps, in elementary school, when Rin called him on his home line to ask some homework-related question, but he honestly cannot remember now, and anyway, that Rin was not this Rin. That Rin had a higher voice and a lighter heart.

Rin snorts. “Well, _you_ haven’t changed, at least. You’re terrible at phone calls, Haru.”

“You’re the one who called me,” Haruka points out, frowning.

“I guess it’s a win if you’re not hanging up, eh.”

Haruka rolls his eyes to himself. He doesn’t have anything to say to this obvious statement. He almost feels like hanging up just to make a point.

Maybe not today, though. Today… they’ve all been through a lot.

Haruka walks over to the edge of his bed. He sits down, waiting in silence for Rin to go on.

“I mean - well - shit, I guess I’d deserve it even if you hang up - ”

“Rin,” Haruka interrupts. “Stop saying that sort of thing.”

Rin’s breath catches, and he barks out a short laugh. It’s still edged with something, some sort of shadow that eludes Haruka’s grasp, but it’s soft, _softer_ and warmer than the bitter laugh he’d heard in the heat of this afternoon, under that tree that reminded them both of a childhood long past.

When Rin speaks again, it’s quick and abrupt, like he’s tripping over himself to get the words out before they get stuck in his throat.

“I’m sorry, Haru.”

Haruka blinks.

He pictures Rin on the other end of the line, clenching the phone to his ear, maybe curling the fingers of his free hand into a fist and feeling his nails dig little crescents into his palm.

“For what?” Haruka asks.

“Being a dick?” Rin offers.

Haruka stares at the wall of his bedroom. He sighs.

“It doesn’t matter now, Rin.”

He hears Rin bite off an irritated _tch_ between his teeth. “If it didn’t matter, do you think I would bother calling you?”

“No,” says Haruka. “But it still doesn’t matter. It’s in the past now.”

He pauses, feeling unformed words melt away on the tip of his tongue. How does he put it to Rin? How does he tell him all this? It’s exasperating, and frustrating, and that’s always been the thing with Rin, that if he doesn’t _put it in words_ , if he doesn’t _say_ what he’s thinking, Rin won’t get it.

It annoys Haruka no end, but then Rin, in turn, always says exactly what he is thinking, and his brutal honesty is at once terrifying and terrifyingly beautiful.

“I’m free now. It’s fine,” says Haruka.

In the end, that’s all he can think of to say.

He hears rough breathing from the other end of the line, pictures Rin gaping wordlessly at his phone.

“What about you, Rin?” he asks.

“Huh?”

Rin sounds perplexed.

“Are you free?” Haruka presses.

“Don’t ask me weird questions like that,” Rin mutters. “You’re the one who’s obsessed with _free_.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to say,” says Haruka, and he means it. Whether Rin is free or not, that’s for Rin himself to decide, for Rin himself to live with. “I just wanted to ask you.”

“Now I just have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Haruka smiles.

They sit in silence for a while before Rin clears his throat, somewhat awkwardly.

“Well, I guess that’s all I wanted to say. I know it’s late. And we’ve had one hell of a day. So… ’night, Haru.”

“Goodnight, Rin.”

There’s a soft click on the other end of the line, and Haruka’s left with the beeping of a dial tone, chiming unnaturally loud in the silence of his bedroom.

 

* * *

 

Rin flips his phone shut and puts it back into his pocket. He doesn’t feel like going back yet. He’ll wait till Ai falls asleep.

He tilts his head back and looks up at the sky above the Samezuka courtyard.

He kicks his heel into the tree he’s leaning against, feels the bark hard and unyielding, and thinks about how the sky isn’t actually black but deep, deep blue, the kind of blue you see if you dive down to the bottom of the ocean, where the sun can’t reach. At the bottom of the ocean, perhaps, there are stars too, stars that shine for each of the drowned sailors.

_those are pearls that were_

**/**  

“…his eyes.”

The slight blond boy next to Rin shuffles his feet awkwardly, stops, and stares at their Ferdinand, a taller kid with a makeshift crown perched askew on top of his messy brown hair.

“Very good,” their English teacher prompts, with an encouraging smile. “Keep going.”

Rin does his best to look _ethereal_ in the background, like an attendant sprite just floating in Ariel’s general vicinity for no real reason. He does not have any lines to speak. It’s no big deal. Rin’s never really got the _hang_ of literature even when it’s in Japanese - let alone in English - let alone in Shakespearean English -

But Rin hates feeling defeated by stupid schoolwork, so he had marched into Kinokuniya on George Street, and he had bought a Japanese translation and a plain English version of _The Tempest_ and studied the play all night in a fevered dream, and there’s something like a fist clenched round his chest now, a grip as hard as iron yet light and slippery as water.

Behind him, Prospero clutches the broomstick that is serving as his magic staff, clears his throat grandly and gestures at Ariel, who is blinking at Ferdinand with wide eyes.

“Uh… pearls that were his eyes…”

Ariel’s voice trails off, and he mumbles under his breath.

Rin swallows the words on the tip of his tongue, feels them slide back down his throat, into the recesses of his heart where the light has gone out. _Click._ A key turns. They’re locked away now.

He is just Rin Matsuoka, the Japanese transfer student who does swimming, and mediocre swimming at that. There’s no reason for him to know his Shakespeare. It’s awkward enough when he speaks normal English and his classmates give him those polite, uncomprehending smiles. He knows that he will probably pronounce something wrongly.

 _full fathom five thy father lies  
_ _of his bones are coral made_

In the solitude of his bedroom, under the dim light of a table lamp, Rin has whispered these lines out loud to himself over and over again, under his breath.

Ariel’s song, seared forever into the memory of a fifteen-year-old haunted by the ghost of his father.

“N-nothing of him…”

Rin’s gaze snaps back towards his classmate. _Well, finally,_ he thinks.

Ariel is now mouthing the next lines, softly. He turns around and looks at Prospero, who stares blankly back at him, then at their English teacher, who gives him an encouraging nod.

And Ariel takes a deep breath, and pipes up with his musical voice.

“Nothing of him that doth fade  
But doth suffer a sea-change - ” 

 **/**  

_into something rich and strange._

Rin huffs out a short sigh into the night.

 _I’m getting sentimental,_ he thinks as the constellations shine brighter, twinkle lightly in the distance. Then he thinks, with a smirk, that Makoto would tell him he’s always been sentimental. _Nothing new there, Rin._

Looking at stars in the sky. Thinking about pearls at the bottom of the ocean. Thinking about lines of bloody _Shakespeare_ that he still remembers, that he still hears, vivid in his memory. _Romantic._

_“What about you, Rin? Are you free?”_

“Dammit, Haru,” Rin mutters out loud. “Why do you always say such weird things?”

Why does Haru do this to him? Why does he feel like he’s been punched in the _guts_ every time he lets Haru talk to him like this? It’s always been so easy to say that he’s doing this for his father. Chasing his Olympic dream. Doing what he couldn't. People listen, and nod with sympathy in their eyes. People understand that. _Rin_ understands that.

But maybe it’s not his father who’s haunting him, after all. Maybe it’s never been.

Maybe it was just simpler to think of it that way.

Matsuoka Toraichi is gone with the sea, and Rin is the sea-change now in his foamy wake, morphing, transforming, into…

_Into my own person…_

Rin stuffs his fists into the pockets of his trackpants, and walks slowly back to his dorm room.

It’s a warm night. The air is balmy, almost summery. It feels like spring is almost over. 

**/**

_as you from crimes would pardoned be_  
_let your indulgence set me free_

  

 

“Oi. Haru.”

Haruka is dimly aware, over the sound of the cheesy horror movie playing on his headphones, that Rin is calling his name. He turns.

Rin jerks his head towards the stewardess standing in the aisle with the food cart. “Chicken or pork?”

“Fish,” says Haruka.

Rin rolls his eyes. He tells the stewardess something in English that Haruka doesn’t catch.

Haruka hits pause on his movie, removes his headphones, and takes the tray that Rin slides over to him. He lifts the foil lid on the hot food. It’s chicken with white rice, slathered in some thick sauce that smells of a shockingly generic _saltiness_ , not really like soy, or teriyaki, or miso, or anything that Haruka can put a culinary label to.

Rin’s digging into what looks like a fried pork chop with gusto. Haruka sighs.

“You’re such a whiner,” says Rin. “Didn’t you eat enough fish already in Sydney?”

“There’s no such thing as enough fish,” says Haruka, shoving a piece of chicken into his mouth. It’s dry on the inside.

“Yeah, well, plane food sucks. Get used to it.”

“Why do I have to get used to it?”

“Because going to competitions means flying. We’re gonna be flying. A damn lot. You should sign up for a frequent flyer scheme.”

“I don’t mind flying,” says Haruka, and it’s true, he doesn’t. Even he is slightly surprised by this. Yes, it’s too many hours in the air, too many hours without water, but there’s something about being suspended like this, cut off from the outside world in the closed-in cocoon of an airplane seat, that reminds him a little of how it feels when he’s swimming. Just a little.

“Maybe I’ll bring my own food,” he adds.

Rin snorts. “Be my guest. I’d like to see you try to get a bento of _saba_ past customs.”

Haruka cuts his chicken up into small bite-sized pieces and eats another spoonful with rice. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rin shoot him an odd, unreadable look.

“What?” asks Haruka.

“Nothing. Talking about flying and customs and stuff. I just thought… this is _real_ , huh?”

Rin still talks too much, and half the time Haruka still doesn’t totally understand him. “What is real?”

“This. You and me.”

Rin waves his plastic fork at Haru, gesturing vaguely between the both of them.

“Taking on the entire world. We’ll swim together _everywhere_. Show them what two boys from Iwatobi can do.”

Haruka swallows his food. “Annoy each other to death?”

“Yeah, that too.”

Rin laughs, and Haruka, to his own surprise, smiles.

He looks into the face of his friend - his _friend_ , after all these years, a classmate and a teammate and a rival and a pain in his side, and now - that face is thinner and sharper, it’s got worry lines where there weren’t any before, but it’s seen so many places and sights, and there is a depth behind the cheeky grin that wasn’t there before, something that shines brighter in that burning crimson gaze.

Finally, perhaps, his friend for good. 

“Rin,” says Haruka. “I’m sorry about that time.”

Rin’s head snaps round in Haruka's direction so quickly that he chokes on his pork chop, and lets out a strangled cough. “ _Huh?_ ”

“When I shouted at you.”

“When did you shout at me?”

Haruka frowns irritably. “That time.”

He doesn’t want to put it in so many words. Surely Rin can remember. It was so recent.

Rin narrows his eyes, a small crease appearing in his brow. “When? What are you talking about?”

“In the locker room.”

Rin blinks, and Haruka finally sees the pieces come together in his mind, as his expression clears. “That? That was nothing."

"It wasn't  _nothing_ ," Haruka mutters. "I - "

He stops, and stares at Rin staring back at him blankly, words swimming in a jumble in his mind. He feels like they are sinking, slowly, one by one, into the bottom of a very deep well. Because it's not just the  _shouting_. It's the pushing him away and the failure he's been and all his self-doubts and - just, everything - but he doesn't know how to say this, doesn't know how to -

"Anyway, I shouted at you too," says Rin.

His voice is calm, matter-of-fact. It's like a splash of cool water to Haruka's face.

“I probably deserved it,” says Haruka.

Rin shrugs. “Yeah, you did. But it’s not like I’ve never deserved a shouting.”

Haruka thinks about this. It’s not untrue. He still can't find the words for Rin. The math of this mutually equitable shouting eludes him. But maybe it isn’t something that needs to make sense, out loud, as long as he feels inside his heart that it is right.

He feels it is right, now.

They are right.

Haruka finishes the last of his chicken and returns to the B-grade horror movie without another word to Rin, and they fly into the sunrise, north across the Pacific.

  

* * *

 

Rin eats his salad last.

He doesn’t mean to eat his meals backwards. He just likes the meat best, so he eats the salad last. He barely registers the limp lettuce leaves that he’s chewing as he watches this random documentary on life in the Outback. There’s very little water in the Outback. Haru would _hate_ it there.

Rin eats all his salad because he knows it is good for his body, and he needs his body to be in the best shape it can be.

And Rin feels Haru shift in the seat next to him as he curls up against the window and closes his eyes. He sneaks a glance out of the corner of his eye. He knows how light a sleeper Haru is, and he knows it can be hell to get any shuteye on planes.

The stewardess comes by, and Rin picks up their trays, hands them to her, stows both his tray table and Haru’s, deftly and silently. Haru doesn’t stir. His headphones are still on his ears, but whatever monstrosity of a movie he was watching has stopped playing. He’s probably listening to music now. Shutting out the world.

Haru has always been a champion of shutting out the world; Rin, a champion of letting it get under his skin, getting under _its_ skin in turn.

They’re the most unlikely pair, Matsuoka and Nanase, and yet, here they are.

Haru, taking a step out into foreign waters for the first time.

Rin, taking a step back, learning to trust his friends again.

They push and pull each other, relentlessly, like the tide, and in the end, like the surface of the ocean, they let themselves settle into a _restlessness_ that’s never quite _still_ or _content_ , always stirring, always shifting. Always reaching for a further shore.

But slowly, gradually, with a strength that they share.

 

* * *

  

_All I wanted was for you to forgive me._

_I never expected you to. I never expected you to ask me for forgiveness._

_But if it’s the two of us taking on the world -_

_yeah, I think we’ll manage._

 

 

_**(one unlikely daytrip)** _

“What the hell, Haru, you’re not a bad driver.”

“It’s not like driving is difficult. You just have to feel the road.”

“I take it back. You’re a shitty driver.”

“I’m not.”

“ _Feel_ the road?”

“Yeah… it’s there.”

“I know it’s there, you dumbass!”

“And the other cars are there. Flowing. Like water.”

“…the fuck, Haru?”

“What?”

“Never mind. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

“Are we there yet?”

“If you’d stop distracting me with crap metaphors, maybe I could actually, I don’t know, _read the map_ \- oh, wait, Coach is calling me - ”

“Don’t answer him.”

" _Huh?"_

“Today is our day off training. You don’t have to answer him. You promised we could go to this waterfall.”

“The waterfall’s gonna be there whenever, Haru, it’s not going away - _hey!_ Give me back my phone!”

“Waterfall, Rin. _Now._ ”

 

* * *

 

They park the rented car in the shadow of a towering maple tree, and trek through a well-trodden path for twenty minutes before catching sight of the sun’s gleaming reflection.

It sparkles lightly, dancing downwards across the cascade of water. There is a pool at the foot of the waterfall, clear as crystal, shimmering, rippling round the mossy rocks of the little clearing.

It is their one day off from training and competitions this summer, and they spend it here, in this different sort of pool; one hidden from the cameras and the eyes of the world, one without the blinking red lights of the timer boards and the gold glint of medals at the end. It is silent here. There are no crowds, no applause.

Not _Matsuoka, R_ and _Nanase, H_ , not the butterfly guy and the freestyle guy from Team Japan.

Just Rin and Haruka.

 

And even as they fall back into their past, they leap forward, surging like an wild wave into the waiting horizon of tomorrow.

 

  

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> This is my first attempt at a RinHaru centric fic, so I just really hope I've done them some justice. I've written them together a lot in my other works, but never with the spotlight on their relationship in greater depth. Their dynamic is very distinct and different from other pairings and friendships I've explored. I really enjoyed writing this.
> 
> come talk about swimming dorks and friendship with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nahyutas) or [tumblr](http://themorninglark.tumblr.com)!


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